Go Big Red!

You probably know me well enough to know that I love me some Facebook.  I love the random nature of seeing the daily minutiae of the lives of people from all different parts of my life listed in my news feed.  It's like "This is Your Life" everyday.  My first friend from childhood talks about his new baby, and then right under it, my girlfriend is asking for advice about digital cameras, and then there's something random from one of my relatives. 

Lately, there's been a lot of talk from one group of friends... my high school friends.  You see, my high school football team was in the state championship playoffs and this past Saturday, they lost in the final seconds to Dunbar High.  Apparently there was some controversy over the last play, in which Dunbar scored, breaking the tie and winning the game.  This is the kind of information I wouldn't know, if not for Facebook.  You might think this is just superficial FB crap, but to the people of Cumberland, MD, there is nothing more serious than football.

We moved to Cumberland when I was 10, almost 11.  Fresh off living in Detroit, MI, a place my entire family hated for the 11 months and 4 days we lived there, my first impression of Cumberland was made by the sign posted on the way into town "Cumberland, MD - Home of the National Marbles Champion 1981".  My thoughts were along the lines of, "wow, this town does not have much to brag about."  Moving from Pittsburgh to Michigan had been pretty traumatic for all of us, and I was just prepared to hate everything about this new hick town my parents had landed us in. 

My feelings of dread were not relieved by our new house.  It was unique in it's splendid ugliness.  The front door was painted safety orange with brown trim.  Apparently, the previous owners had gotten a good deal on this orange and brown paint, because the entryway and living room were the brown and the kitchen was the orange.  The downstairs powder room had wallpaper that rivals Repub's... silver and black metallic with yellow fuzzy diamonds.  My bedroom looked as though someone had color matched a Pink SnoBall.  It was putrid pink, even for an 11 year old girl.  If I remember right, my parents' bedroom was the same safety orange, cause really, why stop at the kitchen?  And their master bath was spectacular in it's tackiness, complete with shag carpeting.



Me, age 11

 But home it was and we unpacked and prepared for that most awkward of childhood moments, starting a new school mid-year.  There's a special kind of pain that is caused by starting mid-year...  everyone already knows where they're going, the cliques are already formed, and you're bound to get the seat directly in front of the teacher in every class.  It's like showing up late for church.  There's no way to sneak in without anyone noticing.  Well intentioned teachers think it's helpful to have you say something about yourself, when really all that does is allow all the other kids to get a good look at your glasses and crooked nose and bad hair and bad clothes.  At least, that's what it feels like.  

Determined to make a good impression, I dressed for my first day in my favorite blue sweater, the one that I hoped made people notice I had blue eyes hidden behind my ginormous glasses.   I got on the school bus with no problem and thought maybe this would be okay.  Maybe I would make a good impression.  Maybe I would finally be like Elizabeth from Sweet Valley High and everyone would love me. 

I noticed something strange pretty quickly: my bus was decorated with red and white signs and streamers.  This seemed odd to me, but I didn't really absorb it as I was busily trying to disappear into the seat.  However, when we drove through Cresaptown, I couldn't help but notice that people, some of them adults, were yelling stuff at the bus.  One kid actually threw a rock.  What the hell?  Who throws rocks at a school bus???  The kids on my bus were yelling out the windows back at them.  Was I in the middle of some bizarre small town gang war?  I saw that the buildings and cars we were passing were decorated with blue and white.  Slowly, I looked around at my new classmates.  Every single one of them was wearing red and white.  My blue sweater, so perfect that morning, suddenly felt two sizes too small and extraordinarily hot. 

It was Homecoming.  See, in Cumberland, there are two public high schools.  Fort Hill and Allegany.  Fort Hill, or Big Red, is where I would go.  But at this point, I was only in 6th grade, and going to Washington Middle School.  However, Cumberland is somewhat of a geographical anomaly - it's 3 hours to everywhere.  Equidistant from Pittsburgh, Baltimore and DC, affinity to any of these cities is tenuous.  It's alliance to the high school team that defines this town. 

Of course, my first day of school was Pep Rally Day, when the Fort Hill Sentinels made an appearance to their younger fans.  Every kid was dressed in red and white, and I stuck out like a big blue thumb.  The hated Allegany Campers (and I have no idea to this day why they were named that) school colors are blue and white.   My mortification was epic. 





Erin & Kellee

Defeated and embarrassed, I got on the bus to go home.  Prepared to sit alone and stare at my textbooks the entire way home, I was shocked when a pretty blond girl positively bounded onto the seat next to me.  "Hi!  I'm Kellee!  You're new, right?  Where are you from?  Do you like it here?  Where do you live?"  She shot questions at me faster than Kirstie Alley eats potato chips.  With each question, my amazement grew.  This girl was actually talking to me, and being nice, and seemed interested in me.  Could it be?  Could I actually have a friend?  I did.  I was lucky enough to meet Kellee Gulck, and from that day, Cumberland became my home.  I eventually went on to be a Sentinel, and I still have my letter jacket to prove it.  I was on the Rifle Squad - no, not shooting, twirling - so I performed at every football game.  My heart still skips a beat when I hear "Anchors Aweigh" which was the tune used for our fight song.  And I can still march 10 yards in 8 steps. 

We moved from Cumberland when I was 17.  College and life have happened in the 20 years since high school, and if not for the power of social networking, I would never know that Fort Hill was robbed of their States chances last weekend.  Not that knowing materially changed my day, but somehow it's nice to know that those traditions are still there and that part of my childhood lives on.  Cumberland seemed like a hick town when we drove in, but it was a great place to be a kid and I'll alway consider myself priviledged to have lived there. 

Sunday Sermon

When Caroline decided that she wanted to come stay with us for the year, one of her few requests was that we go to Mass each Sunday.  Jeff and I are pretty much your standard "C & E" Catholics - we go on Christmas and Easter, and even then it's wholly dependant on how the children are behaving.  But how do you turn down a 16 year old that wants to go to Mass? 

Taking the whole family to church every Sunday is not an option.  I'm a firm believer that if you're spending the whole time entertaining/diciplining your two year old, you might as well not be at church anyway.  I don't want to be a distraction to others either, however, Ellie is five and that's plenty old to learn how to sit still for an hour.  So we decided that one of us parents, Caroline, and Ellie would be attending each week. 

Each week, Ellie whines and complains and moans and cries about going.  Yesterday it was my turn to take the girls and I was prepared for the onslaught of "It's boring!  I don't like standing.  I'm hungry.  I'm Jewish." that I knew would start as soon as I told her it was time to go.  Luckily, I had the threat of a birthday party to hang over her head and with the proper motivation ("If you don't stop complaining, you're not going to Mr. Taylor's birthday party") we were off.  Of course, there was much kvetching and dramatic sniffling from the back seat and I commented offhandedly to Caroline that yet another generation learns to hate going to church and that started me thinking about my own journey through the practical part, not the religious part, of churchgoing.

My dad is the driving force behind my church upbringing.  He's Catholic and has gone to church every Sunday, with very few exceptions, my whole life.  As a child, my recollections of church are of being lost in a forest of adult legs, staring at the pew and tracing the wood grain patterns with my fingers.  My favorite part of Mass was when my dad would carry me up to receive Communion.  Communion was also my least favorite part, for when I got old enough, he would leave us in the pew and I believe he acted as an usher from time to time.  Sunday school was always kind of a drag, but I LOVED my first Holy Communion... I loved the dress, I loved the hairpiece I wore, I loved the party afterwards and I certainly didn't look askanse at the gifts. 

After that, Communion continued to be my favorite part of Mass, but not for the 'transubstantiation' (when the bread becomes the body of Christ in Catholic mass), but rather because in good Catholic tradition, we weren't allowed to eat before Mass.  So the wafer was generally the first thing I'd eaten that day and they're actually kind of tasty.... in an unleavened bread sort of way.  Jeff and I both discovered our mutual taste for Hosts recently and had a good laugh about how we both wished you were allowed to get in line for another.  I can rememeber being very stressed out about chewing it though, cause there just seemed to be something terribly wrong with the idea of chewing up Jesus' body.  I would hold it in my mouth for as long as I could and try to let it melt.  This almost always resulted in the wafer sticking like plaster to the roof of my mouth, causing me to spend the rest of Mass surreptitiously trying to scrape it off with my tongue. 

As a teenager, my favorite part of Mass was actually the drive home.  And not cause it was church was over, but rather, after my brother went into the Army, it was just me and Dad in the car.  It was probably the only time I was alone with my dad and we had the best conversations.  We would talk about boys, college, careers, religion... you name it, we talked about it.  These were the times when my dad told me that I was capable of anything I put my mind to, and that I should never accept less than total respect from my boyfriends, and he may not know how carefully I listened.  Lord knows I tried to pretend like I wasn't.  To this day, I love going to church with my dad.  It's like putting on your comfiest pair of slippers. 

Now that I'm a grown up, my favorite part of Mass is the time after Communion, when the priests are putting everything away and there's a few minutes of just music.  People are still kneeling and praying, and I usually take this time to talk to my grandparents.  When I was a kid, I'd talk to my grandfather Moran, who died when I was 7.  I'd tell him about myself and I'd use that time to consider if he'd be proud of me.  These days, I tell my grandmothers about my kids and what they're doing, and I still talk my grandfather and ask him for advice.  I think I've always had the idea that my problems might not be important enough for God to get to right away - it's not world peace or anything - but my grandparents have to be interested, right? 

So for now, I know that I'll have to deal with complaining and whining for a few more years... as each kid gets old enough to be allowed to go to church.  Hopefully, they'll have something of the same process as me though and find out that church is a quiet place to think and that being still isn't always a bad thing.

Back in the saddle

It's been a while since I posted and I have a couple good reasons.  Things in the Lacey household have been a little bit crazy for the last two months.  September started strong with the typical back to school madness, all of which was completely overtaken at the end of September by the catastrophic illness of my bestie's daughter Molly.  Kristen has written eloquently and bravely on her CaringBridge site, so if you're interested in Molly's story go to https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/mollydunne/createorsignin. 

Meanwhile, in LaceyLand, we've had our own shares of stress and strain and in typical Erin Lacey style, I try to see as much absurditiy as possible.  Which leads us to tonight's story.  On Sunday, October 10, Jack awoke seemingly fine, but it became apparent very quickly that he was having some kind of issue.  I thought it was an ear infection and, with him being a third child and all, decided that he would still have an ear infection on Monday and left him home with Caroline, while the rest of us attended a party for our friend Andee. 

Monday morning, I awoke to the sound of Jeff getting Jack out of bed and saying something to the effect of "Holy crap!"  I leapt out of bed - and by that I mean dragged myself into a sitting position and then took a minute to curse all things morning.  Once I collected myself, I came down to the dining room to find Jeff holding a very odd looking Jack.  The entire right side of his little face was swollen and he looked generally miserable.  Jeff took Maggie and the baby to drop Mags off at preschool and Jackieboy and I went off to urgent care. 

Strangely enough, this happened on the first occasion in the five years of going to Dr. Field that she wasn't available when I needed her.  This is our doctor who, when Jack was a baby with croup, called us back on a Sunday and had us meet her in her office, but asked us if we could wait to meet her until after her cake came out of the oven.  However, Dr. Field's father in law had passed away over the weekend and she was at his funeral on Monday.  We got to the Lantana Square Urgent Care only to find out that it was closed until noon.  I called Dr. Field's office in hopes that her trusty office staff could tell me where I should go next, and when I described Jack's symptoms, she stopped me at facial swelling and told me to go to the ER. 

Having just spent a good bit of time at AI Dupont, I was leary of going there again.  It seemed like a bit of a bad dream to be pulling in with my own child.  They whisked us right back to a room and within twenty minutes of being there, Jack had IV and a CT scan and a diagnosis of Parapharyngeal Abcess.  Basically this means that he's had an infection in the WAAAAAAY back of his throat.  Treatment?  Two days of IV antibiodics.  WHAT?!?!?!?  My mind started to race... I'd need a change of clothes, someone to watch the other kids, can Jeff take off work?  I hadn't even had breakfast, now was I allowed to leave him to eat? 

We were admitted and taken to the care of the Gold Team on 4F.  Jeff got us settled in and then left for the night.  Jack was pretty dehydrated so in addition to the antibiodics, he was also receiving fluids.  At some point after Jeff left, Jack went to sleep.  A couple hours later, the alarm indicating the fluids had run out started to blare.  Not wanting it to wake Jack, I ran out to the nurses station and called in Nurse Nancy (that was really her name and it pleased me endlessly).  Nurse Nancy came in and while she was changing the bag, I noticed the gauze covering the IV site was bloody.  One second later, it became apparent why... Jack had rolled over in his sleep and pulled the IV needle right out of his hand.  The IV fluid had just pumped out all over his crib and his gown.  Nurse Nancy told me that she'd get the "IV nurse" up there to fix him up.

IV Nurse, who's name I've forgotten, has absolutely no luck with sticking Jack.  Probably the worst part of the whole experience was wiping the streaming tears from Jackie's face while they stuck him three times, trying to get a vein.  Finally IV nurse said that she couldn't do it, so they were going to have to call transport.  Transport?  I asked.  Turns out that when they have a particularly difficult IV to put in, Transport is the go-to.  I guess they have to put IVs in kids while bouncing in ambulances or airplanes, so it sort of makes sense.  In walks the Transport Nurse, the best of the best, the savior of my poor Jack, and she looks at me over Jack's sad little form and I immediately notice that her right eye is looking at me, but her left eye is looking at Nurse Nancy.  A little shocked by this, I immediately tell myself not to worry about it.  What's a little bit of a strabismus?  Obviously the Nurse Nancy thinks that she's the best choice.  Then Transport Nurse reaches out to take Jack's arm to inspect his veins and then I notice that she only has two fingers and half of a thumb n her right hand.  Strangely enough, the thing that interested me the most about this latest development was how was she going to get a glove on?  Quick as a flash, Transport Nurse, walleyed as she was, had a new IV in and Jack's arm taped within an inch of it's life.  So that will teach me to judge a book by it's cover!

The rest of our stay was uneventful.  On Wednesday morning, we were released back into the wild and Jack was given a clean bill of health a couple days later by the returned Dr. Field.  There is nothing like having your friend's kid be critically ill to put things in perspective, and in the grand scheme of things, this was a blip.  Before we left, the nurses in 4F were asking us if Jack was acting more like himself, and at the time it was a BIG no.  I told them that when he started throwing stuff at them, it was time for us to go.  Last thing Jack did before we left was throw his full sippy cup and hit me right on the top of my foot... it was time for us to go!!